REACT… to the bitter-sweet end of a project

I’ve been working on this “quote”…

There is pride in results/achievement, however, there is knowledge in the process

OR

Results give you pride and recognition, the Process gives you knowledge and experience… be mindful and enjoy the process, it’s effects last longer…

Because I really, REALLY believe in the value of THE PROCESS in any given task, though sadly, most people, jobs, school programs are focused on the END RESULT, the points accumulated, the accounts brought in, the grade assigned…

Anyway, it’s complicated to change a belief and it’s even more complicated to find consolation when what you really want is to finish something knowing that when it’s done, IT’S DONE!

Recently, a dear blogging friend and wordpress neighbor Mame from Write My Brains Out posted The End where she described her emotional state as she wrote the final words to her novel…”It was more anticlimactic than I could have imagined. No joy, no sense of accomplishment, no relief.”

You know how that goes, right?! I did…I do!

Endings are always bitter-sweet to me, and in many cases I shy away from them, avoiding, as Mame… “I actually didn’t write THE END at first. I simply wrote all I could think to write and when I was empty I went to bed.”

I seldom say good-bye… as I approach the final touches, the final pages… I move on to another thing, project, book, painting…

Anyway, for the past three and a half weeks I’ve been working on a project, not for me, for a woman, for her son’s First Communion…so this I HAD TO TAKE THROUGH TO THE END… and I did. Of course, as with all “long” projects, I was looking forward to finishing, not expecting to be hit with some weird kind of… sadness, nostalgia, grief. Hhhmmm, weird!

But why?

So I did some soul-searching, some emotional dissecting and found that it was mostly FEAR, fear that I would not get another project like this one, fear that the woman would not be totally satisfied with my work, fear that this was the last “good” thing I did…

I did not like this, “this is work and in work, even in creative, right-brain, emotionally taxing work, you/ I need to let go” I said to myself… I breathed,  I gave myself a hug – practiced some self-compassion – and congratulated myself on having learned tons from the experience.

THE END.

…

A few hours after I delivered everything, the woman called, and said, “I’m not calling to say I liked your work… I’m calling to say I loved every thing you did, your efforts will make my son’s First Communion a truly memorable one. Thank you Alexandra and you’ll be hearing from me soon, I’ve got another important event coming up in Summer!”

…

Aaaah, a lovely ending even for a person like me who isn’t particularly fond of endings 🙂

…

So back to my quote…

any thoughts?

 

p.s. As I checked/googled my quote draft to see if I wasn’t unknowingly plagiarizing, I found this document on PRIDE, “scientifically interesting”, said the nerd…

“…pride may serve important adaptive functions. The expression of pride may communicate an individual’s success (which elicits the emotion) to others, thereby enhancing the individual’s social status; and the subjective experience of pride might reinforce the behaviors that generate proud feelings, boost self-esteem, and communicate to the individual that she or he merits increased status. Thus, following a socially valued success, pride might function to maintain and promote an individual’s social status and group acceptance…” from the PDF file titled

The Psychological Structure of Pride: A Tale of Two Facets

xo lovely people

featured image from here